Nokia paid several million Euros to protect Symbian’s source code from being leaked

In a rather surprising revelation, Finnish TV station MTV said on Tuesday that about six years ago, Nokia was blackmailed by criminals. Said criminals had gotten access to the source code of Nokia’s mobile operating system, Symbian. They threatened Nokia that they would leak it if not paid a hefty sum of money, which amounted to several million Euros.

Police officials also confirmed that they had investigated on the alleged blackmailing — and some of those cases have yet to close. “We are investigating felony blackmail, with Nokia the injured party,” said Detective Chief Inspector Tero Haapala.

The blackmailers obtained access to the encryption key for the core part of the Symbian operating system. If those keys fell into the wrong hands — like security hackers — they may have written malware that would be quite indistinguishable.

Nokia agreed to deliver the cash to a parking lot in Tampere, Finland. The company had informed the police about it, though the cops couldn’t do much as they lost track of the blackmailers.